


let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide

by ace_bookdragon



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: Fluff, Implied Aphobia, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28819785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ace_bookdragon/pseuds/ace_bookdragon
Summary: Asexual!Crowley comes out to Halt, his partner. They both struggle to figure out how to make their relationship work despite this.
Relationships: Crowley Meratyn/Halt O'Carrick
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who don't know: Someone who's asexual experiences little to no sexual attraction. Sexual attraction is about finding a specific person sexually appealing. However, everyone has a different experience with being asexual, and asexuality can mean different things to different people.

Crowley is sure of a few things.

One, he’s asexual.

Two, he’s also gay.

And three, Halt might be about to break up with him because he’s ace.

He forces himself to look up, to meet Halt’s eyes across the table. They’re sitting at the table in the living room/ kitchen of the small apartment they rent together, cups of coffee pushed close. Birds sing outside the open window, and the air coming through is clear and cool, taking away some of the sweat from Crowley’s hands. He rubs them against his jeans, shifts his position on the chair for the fifth time.

Coming out as ace. It’s a big thing, especially when he’s dating someone who is most definitely not. He had hoped that Halt would be able to accept it. He knew there would be a lot of explaining to do because who in the goddamn world knows what asexual means? He knew it would be a lot for Halt to process. But he thought that their relationship was strong enough, that Halt would still love him even though Crowley had a lack of sexual attraction.

But Halt’s sitting there silently, the silver oakleaf necklace Crowley got him for his birthday rising and falling on his chest as he breathes. Crowley is having trouble gauging his reaction. It’s been a few minutes since he told him, and he hasn’t done anything but inhale sharply for a moment. 

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” Crowley tries nervously. He feels Halt’s gray collie Abelard brushing up around his legs under the table, begging for pets. “God, Halt, I do. It’s just that… I don’t feel sexual attraction. I don’t feel this urge to— you know— directed at a specific person. But that doesn’t mean I can’t fall in love with someone.”

Halt finally shifts his weight in his chair, leans forward to put his forearms on the table. Crowley’s eyes follow the movement, and he unconsciously leans back a little in his chair, just in case. 

“I see,” Halt says slowly. “So you’re...”

“Asexual,” Crowley finishes the sentence. Inside his head, he’s praying to whatever god exists that Halt accepts him as he is, accepts how their relationship has suddenly changed. He knows that very few people know what asexuality is and that even less think of it as something good. Love without sex is a foreign concept, something alien to so many people. For them it’s an intrinsic part of life. Society is steeped in it, so that Crowley and so many others have felt broken because of their lack of sexual attraction. Alien. So many people think that ace people can be “fixed”. That sex is love, not just one part of it. What if Halt breaks things off with him because he doesn’t feel the desire to fulfill him in that way? 

Crowley forces himself to push the old fear to the back of his mind, the fear that when he finally comes out about this part of who he is, he’ll be rejected. But he and Halt have been dating for over two years now and he hopes that that will be enough. They’ve stayed together through 2020, haven’t they? Through a seemingly unending pandemic and major U.S. political strife. If they could spend over nine months cooped up together because of COVID-19 and only see other people through a computer screen, Crowley thinks their relationship will hopefully last through this.

He hopes.

Halt nods a little. “Okay…” He pauses, then goes on, “I kind of thought you might be different from me because of all of those hints you were dropping over the past few months about it, but now I’ve learned there’s a word for it.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says. “Yeah, there is. And it’s who I am. In the same way that you’re gay, I’m asexual. It’s just who I am.”

Halt makes some sort of sighing noise and stands, grabbing his mask and Abelard’s leash. “I know.” He stops with his hand resting against the smooth wood. “I hope that you’re not angry if I go off by myself for a bit? I need to think about this.”

Crowley nods, and Halt leaves him alone in the kitchen, the mug of coffee in his hands slowly going cold.

It’s not that Halt is angry at Crowley for being asexual. It’s just that he’s confused.

He quickens his step and crosses the bridge to the small trail a mile from the apartment with Abelard racing at his side, thinking about how he was preparing for some sort of confession of otherness from Crowley. There had been so many small hints in the jokes his boyfriend had made over the past few months, little bits of what do you mean, that guy’s hot? Halt has known Crowley for a while now, and he’s gotten good at reading him, knowing when he’s trying to tell him something and when he’s keeping a secret. 

So this isn’t entirely unexpected. But it’s new, and he can already tell it’ll be complicated. Crowley said he was still in love with Halt, but how can he know that’s the truth? What is love without sex? How is that possible? And being gay… was that just a cover-up for being this abnormal?

No. Not abnormal, Halt corrects himself. Whatever Crowley is, it’s not abnormal. It’s just different. And it’s not how Halt is. That’s the issue. Because Halt is not ace, he can’t begin to understand why this would happen. Did he do something to Crowley? Did he hurt him? Why would Crowley choose to be like this?

The woods blur around him as sweat falls into his eyes, but he wipes it away and curses. If anyone should know that sexuality isn’t a choice, it would be him. He had thought that his brother, now his one surviving relative, would accept him when he came out. Instead, Ferris had slapped him across the face and told him to change who he was. 

He couldn’t do it. It was impossible. And he knows that it would be the same for Crowley. 

On the chance that Crowley still loves him, how will their relationship work? How? Halt isn’t ace. He needs it. Life would be weird without it. He could probably have a relationship without it, but he is not sure he wants to. Will he have to make a choice, eventually? To leave Crowley or to stay? What would he choose in that situation? 

Crowley, he tells himself. Probably.

He and Abelard scramble over a log that’s fallen over the trail, then resume their steady run as the trail slopes upwards. Halt loses himself in the steady rhythm of his shoes against the rocky ground, the jingle of Abelard’s collar and the burn of his muscles as he winds higher and higher. 

He knows that he is still in love. He doesn’t want to part with Crowley. He wants to see him every morning, long red hair braided in a tail down his back, messy from sleep. He wants to crawl beneath the covers of their bed in the winter and snark playfully at him when their cold feet touch. He wants to watch a trashy romcom with him and cringe at the characters while squeezing his hand at the same time.

Maybe they’ll figure it out. Maybe this is all just new to him. When he gets back to the apartment he’ll google asexuality and learn about it.

Learning is good.

“I can’t tell if it went good or bad. I think maybe bad,” Crowley says into his phone’s speaker. 

Pauline’s voice comes back at him, tinny and slightly disjointed from the WiFi connection. “What did he say?”

“He went silent for a while. Then I tried to explain and he said I’ve been dropping hints and he thought I might be different. Then he left and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Through his phone’s camera, he sees her adjust one side of her bobbed hair. It’s too aggressively white to be anything but dyed, and he can see the dark roots showing through towards the center. She leans forward a little. Weekly FaceTime calls have become their little tradition, two old friends catching up after a week of at-home work. Crowley hates it, the distance between him and everyone else, how he can’t go out without having to remember to put on a mask. Pauline and her daughter Alyss have been doing fine this entire time, somehow. Crowley thinks it’s because Pauline is just good at everything she does. 

“Let him be for a bit,” she advises. “He needs to sort things out in his head. He’ll probably try to keep you two together. It’s clear how much he loves you.”

 _But what part of me?_ Crowley wonders. _My body, even though we’ve only done it a few times and I’ve hated all of them? What does he love?_

“Yeah, I guess,” he replies. “Knowing him, he’ll probably go try to learn about it. Which is good. It’s just… I want to be accepted by him, you know? I love him so much and I don’t want to lose that. And plus, we’re stuck together until Covid ends and it would be really great not to have to share the apartment with someone who’s aphobic.”

“I see that,” Pauline says. “God, I hope he’s not bad to you later. If he is….” she lets the sentence hang, letting Crowley guess at what she'd do. Something big probably.  
“Thanks.” Crowley forces a weak smile and tries to ignore the weak, fluttering feeling in his stomach. “It means so much to have supportive friends.”

She rakes her hand through her hair and smiles. “Of course. And I always will be.” 

Crowley feels like his heart is expanding, filling the aching place of worry and fear in his chest with something lighter, like hope. Maybe this all will turn out well. 

Halt returns to the apartment sweaty and dirty. He peels his mask off, unclips Abelard’s leash, and heads straight for the shower before Crowley can spot him. It feels so good to wash the sweat and grime of an adventure off his skin. 

He shampoos his hair, noting that it’s getting longer again. He should cut it sometime. Do it himself like the only other time he’s gotten a haircut in quarantine. Crowley can’t be trusted with scissors or anything sharp, so Halt had looked up some hair tutorials and did his best. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but the end result was definitely rough. 

It’s warm in the shower, compared to the crisp late winter air outside. Halt wants to stay in it forever, to feel nothing but the gentle pound of the water on his shoulders. But he has to make dinner, and it’s getting later than he’d like.

As he’s getting out of the shower, he hears the sound of someone trying to open the bathroom door and then a soft knock. Crowley. Normally he’d be fine letting Crowley come in and leave the door unlocked, but today he feels like he wants a bit more privacy. 

“Hang on!” 

“Since when do you care about me seeing you doing that?” Crowley asks through the door. He’s trying to make everything lighter, to bridge the rift between them and show that even if they end up not being partners, they can still be friends like they were before.

Halt grumbles a little. “Can I have some privacy for once?”

“I need a band-aid!” On the other side of the door, Crowley holds one hand in the other, a thin line of blood welling from the pad of his finger, where he cut himself trying to open a soda can earlier. “Please let me in, I’m bleeding!”

“You’re _what?_ ” Halt says, and almost falls over trying to put his pants on. “Are you— what did you do?” He gets them on and hastily unlocks and opens the door. Crowley’s standing there, cradling one hand in the other, looking down at his fingertip.

Halt turns and rummages in the medicine cabinet behind him. After a moment he emerges with a pack of band-aids and some Neosporin, passing them to Crowley. He watches closely as the redhead clumsily dots some of the Neosporin onto his finger and then wraps a band-aid around it. 

“I was trying to open a soda can,” Crowley says sheepishly, holding up the bandaged forefinger. “I cut myself on the opening.”

Halt sighs. “You manage to get injuries on the tiniest things, Crow.”

“I know I do.”

Halt gives him a small smile, then goes serious again. “Stay out of the kitchen while I’m cooking, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt on a knife or the stove.”

“I’ll stay out. I have stuff I need to do in my room anyways.” 

Crowley heads the other way and enters one of the bedrooms in their small two bedroom apartment. It’s been converted to an office for him during quarantine. At the window, he has a view out over the sidewalk, the people bustling along below. He can see the Sprouts across the street. It was good that he and Halt decided to rent here, in the heart of the city. Everything is so close at hand. But it’s also never truly quiet, something he misses a little. He’d grown up on a farm on the outskirts of a small town, and before coming to university here he had never known much more than dirty roads, beat up trucks, and the constant sounds of animals.

The city is a nice place. But he also misses the quiet of the night, the internal silence the stars give him. He’d go back there, but his parents aren’t accepting of who he is in any way, so it would be impossible. He misses the lands there, the way that if he went into the woods bordering the fields, he could find small pink wildflowers, similar to the ones sitting in a jar on the windowsill now. Halt’s work. He feels a sharp pang in his stomach as he remembers that their relationship might not continue if Halt won’t accept having an ace partner. 

Crowley pulls himself away from the window and starts organizing the small table that serves as his desk, putting the pens in a mason jar and stacking his papers into a neat pile. He makes sure his computer charger is plugged into the charging strip along the wall and within easy reach. He hates the idea of going on another Zoom, but they’re inevitable now. Hopefully they’ll become less common soon, what with a COVID vaccine in the works. 

When everything looks nice on the desk, he goes to the bookshelves along the wall. Some of the books have been shoved in carelessly, without heed to the placing in his carefully alphabetized lines of spines. He takes each one in his hands, running his hands gently over the smooth spines and placing them in the correct spot. 

An hour of cleaning later, he hears Halt call for him to come and eat. They’ve eaten dinner together every night since moving in together. “Dinner” may be the incorrect word for some of those nights, when they were eating quick bites of the fast food they ordered because Halt didn’t have time to cook and they both had work to do. But they’ve always eaten something together. Even if they had hit a rough patch earlier.

The kitchen smells delicious, like spices and meat and oil. Halt is at the stove, a pair of tongs in his hand, something out of sight on the pan. Abelard sits patiently by his feet, nose pointed up at the stove. Every now and then Halt reaches down to scratch his head, but he doesn’t give the dog any of what he’s cooking. 

“I made chicken,” he says without turning. There’s a sizzle and then something drops onto a ceramic plate at his hand by the counter. A strip of chicken, with some kind of spice mix dusting it. Halt flips two more strips onto the plate and then reaches for another from the cabinet. 

“You can take this one,” he says, gesturing to the laden plate. “There’s some carrot sticks in a plastic container in the refrigerator, soaking in water.”

“Thanks,” Crowley says. His mouth is watering. Halt’s the best cook he’s ever met. 

He puts his plate on the table next to a napkin neatly laid with a fork and knife and goes to get the carrots. By the time he’s put the small container in the center of the table and filled two glasses with water, Halt has another plate ready and is sliding into one of the chairs. 

“Looks good,” Crowley comments, and Halt nods. He’s not surprised.

It tastes as good as it looks and smells. A few minutes of slightly awkward silence in, Crowley glances up and says, “So. About me being asexual.”

“Yeah?” 

“Well… do you… are we still okay?”

Halt takes in a deep breath. “I’m not entirely sure at this point, Crowley. I’m learning, though. I’m trying to do some research, and figure this out for myself. You’re a romantic ace, though, right?”

“Yeah. I am. Homoromantic, so I only fall in love with guys.”

Halt’s shoulders lift a little. “Alright. I… that’s good to know. Thanks for telling me.”

“Halt?”

“Yes?”

“Without thinking about our relationship, do you accept me?”

Halt’s reply comes quick, then, without hesitation. “I do.”

Crowley takes in a deep, relieved breath, some of the worry in his chest lessening a little. “Good. Thank god.” He’s hoping that if us doesn’t work out, they can still stay friends. Like they were before, in the months spent at university before they fell in love. 

Halt smiles a little at that, but it’s a small, slightly sad one, with just the corners of his mouth tilting upward and his eyes a little cold. He reaches for the salt and dusts some on his chicken. After a few moments he says, “I don’t want you to feel as terrible for being ace as my brother and parents make me feel for being gay.”

Crowley wants to get up, to hug him out of relief for the acceptance, and then go punch his family. Each and every rotten part of it. Everyone who had made Halt feel like he was worth less for being who he was. Halt’s parents are dead, so he’d make do with going and spitting on their graves. 

But instead he just takes a bite of food and says “thanks.”

“Of course, it’s basic human decency,” Halt says softly, and they lapse into silence.

Several days pass, and they fall into a sort of unspoken agreement of neutrality. They do things as they normally would, but with less affection. There’s no kisses or sudden hugs behind the back. Conversations like two people still getting to know each other, who have struck a tentative friendship. Crowley has never been like this around Halt, has always shown his whole heart and thoughts to the shorter man, until now. It’s odd. For a while, there was the secret of being asexual, but that’s in the open now, and it’s what’s keeping them apart. Maybe not totally apart, but there’s a sense of distance between them nevertheless. 

Halt, for his part, has been researching asexuality more than he’s ever researched something in his life. He has to learn. He thinks about Crowley night and day, his confession and the fear in his eyes as he waited for Halt to either accept or reject him. 

He knows he’s in love with Crowley. God, he is. He loves this man with every fiber of his being. There’s a voice in the back of his head that says that if he loves Crowley as much as he thinks he does, he should accept him no matter what. And the more he reads up on asexuality and what it means, the more he’s convinced that Crowley is telling the truth when he says he loves him. 

But still. Love without sex. It’s an odd concept to him. He’d thought that sexual desire was love, simple as that. He knew that there was a more intellectual side of it, too, the dating part, but he thought that that came after, developed more as a side effect than anything. 

The internet says that they’re different and that sexual desire is called sexual attraction and that urge to date is called romantic attraction. Some people, like Crowley, don’t feel sexual attraction but feel romantic attraction. Some are the opposite. And some don’t feel both sexual and romantic attraction. 

The internet also says that there are perfectly fine ways to have a relationship between someone who does feel sexual attraction and someone who doesn’t. They could have a relationship with another partner. Or they could just not do it. They can make it work if they want to. And Halt thinks they both do want to. 

So just over a week after Crowley came out, he corners him one day at the kitchen sink, where his roommate? partner? (He’s not sure what it is now) is filling up a glass of water. Crowley turns from what he’s doing when Halt slides into the place where the edge of the counter and the sink meet, right in front of the toaster. He leans back, trying to look casual. “Hi.”

Crowley turns the tap off and takes a long sip of water before replying, slightly warily. “Hey.”

Halt takes a deep breath in. “I’ve thought about things a lot,” he says. “I’ve done research, too. And I think… us can still work out. We’ll have to figure this out as we go, and it probably won’t always be nice and happy, but we can do it. I love you, your brain and neat freakiness and your asexuality. All of it.”

He hears Crowley’s sharp breath in, sees a hundred fragmented emotions flash behind his eyes. The redhead is quiet for a moment, relief and something like joy but a little heavier sweeping through him in a tide that threatens to lift him off his feet. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. The person he cares about so much accepts him, wants to continue what they had. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he does his best to blink them away. But they stay hovering at the edges, ready to spill over at with a slight push.

There’s a hand on his waist suddenly, grounding him. Halt’s. He can see the warm brown skin, the familiar outlines of his fingers. Crowley is suddenly conscious of everything; the cold wooden floor beneath his feet, the place where his round silver watch— a gift from Halt on their one year anniversary— hugs his wrist. The way his hand is suddenly shaking.

“Oh,” he says in a voice made raspy by the strange lump in his throat. “Yes. Yeah. Of course.”

Halt lifts a hand, flaps it a little in a helpless gesture. “So.”

Crowley suddenly realizes that he’s supposed to say something in response. Something more coherent. “I love you too.”

He leans forward a bit, setting the glass of water down on the counter. Halt moves a fraction to meet him, and Crowley feels their chests connect, Halt’s arms going to wrap tightly around his waist. Crowley rests his head on Halt’s shoulder, feeling the good of each inch of pressed skin, the warmth, the solidity of it. It’s like something pulls them together, and keeps them that way. Two men, of different backgrounds and sexualities and heights and races and a thousand other things. Two men, who still love each other, though their love might be different from the norms in both the straight and the LGBTQIA+ communities.

The road ahead may be hard, but they’ll make it work.


End file.
